Workshops

iOS Workshop: Going global with games on iOS

International experts will cover business and technical aspects of building and selling games on iOS worldwide. How to design and adapt your game for distribution on foreign markets, how to avoid common mistakes and explore amazing opportunities related to particular regions.

This is a closed invite-only session with pre-registration, attendance is limited to one person per company and is subject to availability. This session will be held in English language.

Workshop: Remote storage of the game data in the cloud

To date, Unity game developers use a variety of services for remote data storage in gaming projects. During this workshop, you will be able to gain unique practical experience in creating cloud storage of game progress using Unity and Azure cloud storage service. To further practice and try to connect the cloud storage from Azure, everyone registered at the workshop will receive Azure Pass for $100.

Keynotes

Cross-Platform Juggling

Navigating the design, technical, and production challenges for doing games on both consoles and PC can be a daunting task. We’ll explore the differences, give examples, and talk about strategies for success.

John is the CTO of tinyBuild. In his 17 year career he has worked for Westwood Studios, Electronic Arts, Gas Powered Games and Uber Entertainment. He has worked on well known series such as Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander, Monday Night Combat, and Planetary Annihilation.

Alternative but relative — growing your game’s audience on Twitch with different but familiar content

You have a dedicated audience watching your game on Twitch. How do you grow from there? Join Jon Carnage, Programming Director at Twitch, as he talks about Counter Programming, the art of broadcasting content atypical, yet related to your existing programming to attract a new audience while reaffirming loyalty with your core audience. Jon will talk about how to apply this principle of “being different, but not too different” when introducing new content to your game to keep and attract new players!

Jonathan “Jon Carnage” Joyce is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Twitch Studios where he oversees the creation of Twitch Studios–the company’s in-house production studio–original shows and content. A 17-year veteran of the entertainment industry, Jon started at Twitch in 2012 managing the company’s content distribution, curation, and production and has dedicated his work to helping game developers, brands, and content creators find their voice on Twitch. Prior to Twitch, Jon was the Online Video Director of Destructoid, a Webby Award-winning independent video game news website, and Morning News Coordinator at CBS News.

Rami is speaking

Rami Ismail will share his experience being an indie developer for the last 7 years, launching games in different environments and dwell on problems in the industry as of now.

Rami Ismail is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS, Super Crate Box, GUN GODZ and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Early Days

Horizon Zero Dawn was a long, almost 7-year project. But it had to start somewhere. This session will discuss the road Guerrilla Games has traveled during the prototyping stage of Horizon Zero Dawn.

Leszek Szczepański started making mods for RPGs in high-school. While working on his degree he worked as a professional Dungeon/Game Master. Currently, he is working at Guerrilla Games as a gameplay programmer, where he helped create Horizon Zero Dawn and finish Killzone: Shadow Fall.

Hello Neighbor Postmortem

Alex will tell how the game Hello Neighbor has collected billions of views on Youtube before release, launched merchandise in all US retail stores, and sold half a million copies in the first month.

Alex Nichiporchik founded tinyBuild in 2011 to make video games. The company has since then worked on games like SpeedRunners, Punch Club, Hello Neighbor, Party Hard, and more – in most of which Alex acts as a producer from the publishing side.

Understanding Indie Publishers

In his role as Chief Scout at Raw Fury, Callum looks at dozens of game pitches a week. In this talk, he will be discussing two main subjects: how to give yourself the best chance of a positive outcome when approaching publishers, and how to not worry if it’s negative. Sneak preview: you often don’t need a pitch, and you often don’t need a publisher.

Callum is in charge of signing games at Raw Fury, and consults for various other companies.
Previously, he was responsible for games at Oculus. A 30 under 30, Callum spends most of his time on twitter, is into feminism, mental health, and diversity, and really, really loves indie games.

Tech solutions and tricks in real time mobile multiplayer

Alexander is going to share the examples of technical problems you can face with while developing a mobile synchronous multiplayer, and application solutions that were tested on real projects. You’ll learn everything you were afraid to ask about.

CEO of indie game company, former tech lead at Techno Bears ltd and destiny development.

SubUV frame blending with motion vectors

During this session, Taras is going to give a detailed description of SubUV frame blending with the help of motion vector, its practical value and scope of application in the gaming industry. It will be a step-by-step description of effects creation with the help of SubUV frame blending.

He has a 12-years’ experience of working with VFX. Five of them – real time VFX. Taras worked on such projects as FPS Survarium, full-length animated cartoon ‘Nikita Kozhemyaka’.

Indie game development for UE

When planning the development of a game, like any other product, usually a number of typical questions arise, the correct answer to which will help to significantly reduce development time and it’s cost. I try to answer the main ones to simplify the initial planning and budgeting of your product.

The founder of the StarniGames studio. The last two products: “Star Ghosts” (successfully launched in 2014) and a turn based wargame “Panzer Strategy” (the game is still in development, but already won the Games Gathering 2017 in the nomination “The best game at UE”).

The effective shaders usage for environment generation

The speach will cover the procedural aproach of content generation for environment creation using optimized custom shaders. This kind of system will allow not only to quickly and procedurally adjust the appearance of the scene, but also significantly reduce the size of the textures in the build.

Еsport

Esport. New Media

Esport, which is rapidly growing last 10 years, is a specific niche in media scene. During this session, Stepan is going to explain how multimillion prize funds, investors, teams, superstars, stand apart from the essence of ‘computer game’.

Responsible for esports projects, online broadcasts and offline events at Starladder company, has personal experience with over 20 international esports events.

Platforms

Boost Your Game Promotion With Twitter

Amplify user acquisition and retention with Twitter. Performance based platform insights that will help to boost your results. Case-studies and examples.

Marius is high‐performing, strategic‐thinking digital business professional with more than twelve years’ experience in digital and performance marketing field. His passion is the space where marketing meets technology and math.

Game Design

Delivering highquality UX to the release date

Why do you need a UX designer on the project and what is his role. How to strengthen your influence on the project and the team, and to make everyone’s live better. How to understand what is important and what is not.

Stop Using Score – Rethinking Traditional Game Design

Casting a critical eye on classic game design features like Score, Health, Ammo, Lives and Crafting. We’ll analyse when these features actually create fun gameplay and, more importantly, determine when to avoid them.

Creator of Super Rude Bear Resurrection, which has been widely praised for its design. Serial game jammer, multi award winner, and Physics graduate.

Hunting Whales with Smart Offers

Smart offers is an essential component of the modern games monetization. They are a key to making a $100 worth payment comfortable for the player and ensuring that the player will keep paying on a regular basis. Alexander an author of professional blog progamedev.net, will share his insights on how to efficiently design and operate Smart Offers.

Alexander Shtachenko is a game producer with experience in a product company, gamedev outsourcing and a game start-up. Alex has his professional blog progamedev.net.

How to: open world game-design

Oleksii is going to tell about his own experience. How to create a game world from scratch and what tools will be needed. What to consider and where to look for inspiration. How to make your world remember for a long time.

Game, world and narrative designer with rich experience in developing large, original projects: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, SURVARIUM, Sketch Tales.

Workshop: Game-design as Lego

In workshop will participate teams from audience. There will be 3 rounds: to decompose a game into a patterns of game mechanics, replace core-mechanics of the presented game with another and come up with a new game concept. Answers will be evaluated by experts and other teams, in the end winners will receive prizes.

SEO OrcWork studio, co-founder in Game Designer Cuffs and ARPU.GURU, lecturer at HSBI.

Narrative design in Playrix match-3 games

Gardenscapes and Homescapes successfully proved that even match-3 games can have a well-developed storyline and charismatic characters. Join this session to find out how we develop the Homescapes narrative part and why we think it’s important in the first place.

Narrative and game designer with 10 years experience in the industry; was in the development team of the World Forge studio (Voronezh, Russia), was a leading narrative designer of the Allods Online project. Now Alexey is designing narratives for Playrix match-3 games.

Indie

How to stay lazy and finish the game

The story about the development of the game Phantom Trigger in general. Finding ideas, planning work, when you two and obviously everything can not be done. A little about the technical part, about the pain of outsourcing, about life.

A loving husband, a caring father, and at night an indie developer. The eighth year in business. Released Divide by Sheep, Phantom Trigger and a bunch of cool flash games. Lazy. Bake great pies.

Discussion Panel: Indie Survival Guide

Alex Nichiporchik & indies from around the world

The traditional discussion panel called Indie Survival Guide is returning to DevGAMM. We will bring together developers from different countries on one stage to discuss unique survival strategies for indies, taking into account the latest changes in the industry.

Art & Visuals

Unusual approaches in VFX creation for World of Warplanes

VFX creation on the World of Warplanes project, and also several tips on optimization. Plus I will share several tricks which we use to overcome technical barriers.

I have more than 10 years experience in Game Development as Lead VFX artist/Lead CG Artist/Technical Artist. I worked on a full spectrum of different games, from facebook city building apps to open world FPS and MMO.
World of Warplanes, Social City, Charlaine Harris: Dying for Daylight, Xenus 2.

Understanding of your character – let the character to do his animation by himself

Every animator has his own approach to create good animations. And it can be something more than to use available controllers. In this speech I will talk about my vision of this process and about receptions to understand the character more.

Form design

During the lecture, Dmitry will cover a topic of main principles of design, instruments and techniques of creating aesthetically attractive forms.

Passionate about design and idea generation. Contributed to wide range of projects with different art styles and technical requirements. 5 years experience in 3D art production for games and animation.

Freelance principles and Non-linear Time Management for Artists

Obvious and not obvious principles of working with the clients as the Freelancer or Outsourcing team. Non-linear Time Management for Artists.

Sixteen years in the games industry. Since 2010, Art Trainer of the Online Courses of Academic drawing and Concept art at GUROED.COM. Work experience at: King Ltd (Singapore), Nival, Crytek (Germany), Red Beat, Creoteam etc. The main directions: Art Direction, Character Design, Illustration, 3D.

Creating believable characters

Persuasive characters complete a good story, they are the engine of the plot and the visual part of the narrative. We will analyze the basic elements of visual development to create a memorable and reliable concept of the character.

Was working in position of game designer in Gameloft (World at Arms) and Galaxy Rain (Deadly Rage). Co-owner and 2d artist in M81 studio.

Effective using of Motion Capture technology in gamedev project

We will talk about the process of preparing a game project for using a motion capture system. What are the steps necessary to pass the developer to get the best result from the use of MoCap technology and save the resources.

Mix

Being a producer: Hints, lessons learned and best practices

I will share things I’ve learned while managing complicated multisite collaboration projects with big international teams and a large number of stakeholders. Only real experience and useful hints. For those, who want to become a Producer, or already in managerial position.

Kirill Bragin is a Producer in Ubisoft – a leading publisher, creator and distributor of interactive entertainment and services. Since 2003, he managed the most famous games like Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag, FarCry Primal and FarCry 5.

Getting a publishing deal at the conference: how publishers choose games

Many developers come to conferences with an aim to find a publisher for their game. We would like to tell you what guides publishers choices and how to get a publishing deal. This lecture covers an extensive set of aspects: from metrics to art, setting, and gameplay.

Lead analyst at devtodev with 7 years of experience in game analytics and monetization, helped dozens of companies to improve their KPI. Once I figured out how to calculate player LTV during the first session, but then I woke up and since then l have been trying to recollect it.

Feedback collection proper way. How to avoid data garbling

How to collect user feedback for decision making by game designer and game producer. Rules of research methodology picking and questions formulation. Dramatic differences from colloquial language.
Striking data garbling during data collection, caused by wrong actions – results of provocative experiments with innocent players.

Founder & CEO in Sense.Vision. The company performs playtests (user testing) worldwide. 5 years in playtests, 9 years in mobile entertainment/gamedev, 12 years in marketing agencies. The first specialized company in CIS, the highest quality standards.

How we built, self-published, got featured our first mobile game and survived!

This is a true story about a small indie studio that was able to make and release its first mobile game, without experience and even without an office. Having made a bunch of mistakes we managed to get Apple’s global feature twice, get a place in the Google Play Store Indie Corner, take the third place in the competition from Unity and Microsoft.

11 years ago, me and two friends of mine created the Specialbit studio. During this time we’ve released 8 games in the Hidden-Object genre (Haunted Hotel series, Sonya, The Last Dream and others) and our first mobile puzzle Tap the Blocks.

Discussion Panel: VR & AR in 2018: state, trends, money

During this discussion panel, specialists in the field of virtual reality will discuss the current problems of developing and promoting this kind of products. They will give an overview of the market, tell about arcade and Esport trends. They will try to answer the question: is there any money in this industry and if so, where are they?

Alexey Menshikov, Beatshapers

Roman Martynuk, Dream Dev

Dmitriy Kostyukevich, MiroWin

Audio

Relationship building between the customer and sound designer in conflict situations

Both the customer and the contractor can be super professional in their field of activity, but the human factor always takes place. And sometimes this factor will be a reason for the conflict. How to resolve disputable questions in your cooperation and not affect the project and the people involved?

Founder and CEO of Universe Music, a game audio production studio in Ukraine. Leads the team of talented composers and sound designers since 2011. During this period studio has sounded about 80 video games for Alawar Ent., Nordcurrent, RocketJump Games, Absolutist, Daily Magic Productions etc.